The (Im)maturity level of software testing

A large gap exists between the state-of-the-art in software testing literature, and the state of software testing practice. Empirical research should (and could) play a first class role for bridging this gap. Empirical studies in software testing have focused mainly on the evaluation of techniques for test case selection. But effective selection of test cases by itself is not sufficient to warrant successful testing: we need also empirical studies to start collecting proven patterns that test practitioners can use to predictably solve software testing problems.